Poetry
ສານລຶບພະສູນ
Not translated into English
Anonymous · 1830
Synopsis
The lament, in verse, of a lover separated from the woman he loves. Today it is read as the mourning of a destroyed kingdom: this private grief has become, for the country's schoolchildren, the first testimony of attachment to a homeland. No one knows who wrote it or in precisely which year, and the copies bear no date.
Context
The poem is not dated to any year: it was transmitted on palm-leaf manuscripts and by recitation, and literary historians place it at the beginning of the nineteenth century, after the destruction of Vientiane by the Siamese armies. Printing did not reach Laos until the twentieth century, which explains why a text of such importance long existed only in copies. Its political reading, which makes the lover's lament the mourning of the defeated kingdom, took hold after 1975, when the school made it a set text.
Who it is for
A poem in Lao verse, not translated into French. The title speaks of the extinguishing of the sun's radiance, and its double-layered language requires knowing the history of the kingdom.
Prizes and reception
Lao textbooks give it as the oldest written expression of attachment to the country, and it is taught as such.
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